The Assassins

Over the years Chow Yun-Fat has transitioned from his signature John Woo style gun toting action films to these period style epics. He has always brought a presence with him to every role that delivers something special. His latest film The Assassins continues with these period pieces to attempt to deliver something new.

The Assassins follows the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history and focuses on the warlord Cao Cao in his old age and the relationship between him and his son, while planning to take the throne and avoid assassins. Visually this movie, much like the others that come from this film market, is beautiful to look at. The performances are all great, with Chow Yun-Fat in top form, but nothing that really stands out to take this film to the next level. With the focus of these young people being trained as assassins and the amount of corruption showcased in this film, you would expect a decent amount of action, but sadly that's not the case. Everything from the box art, the synopsis, and the look screams action, but is a bit misleading. This movie focuses more on the political side of things and the family drama leaving a fairly uneventful film. It's not boring or anything just tends to creep along with little to nothing really happening. There are a couple of characters that are rather annoying, but it's hard to tell if it is the actor's performance of the dubbed voice.

This isn't a horrible movie; it just didn't deliver much as a whole. If you go into it ready for a dialogue driven political drama then you will not be disappointed, but just know that it does get a bit convoluted at times. Fans of Chow Yun-Fat will want to give it a view as he is the best part of this whole film.

I love the stories around Three Kingdoms period. And I appreciate Yun - Fat Chow performance. So, this film is only conformation of what you know. No, better, no worst, it reminds the power of prophecies , the substance of politics, the difficulties of parenthood, the impressive Mandarin cinematography, the sad love stories. Nothing special, indeed. But good gift for fans.

Not really bad but certainly not good either and very generic. Confusing story and quite cheesy dialogues and slow motion action scenes. Costumes and armors are very nice, but it does not make a great film.

THE ASSASSINS should be a good film, but it isn't. It's an expensive, expansive Chinese historical drama, featuring the great Chow Yun-Fat in a role which must be a given for him: he's playing the ruthless general Cao Cao, a guy who engaged in and won plenty of battles in the famous Three Kingdoms period. And yet the film chooses a moment at the end of his life to tell a sluggish and rather dull story of a love triangle and hidden romance.

The film looks lavish, for sure, and Yun-Fat gives a solid turn as always. The costumes and sets bring to mind the sumptuous nature of Zhang Yimou's CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, but there the similarities end. The problem is that THE ASSASSINS isn't really about assassins at all, because these characters achieve very little in the storyline. The main character, played by Liu Yi Fei, is completely dull and goes around moping and crying all the while as she falls in love with Yun-Fat's character. Come the end you realise she's made no impact to the storyline and could easily have been excised with no ill effect.

In a bid to counter all this sentimentality, the film-makers throw in a handful of decent action sequences in which the heroic general fends off various attacks by his rivals, including the Emperor. These moments mean that the film isn't bad as a whole, but it's a far cry from what it could have been with a script re-write. There are also some ludicrous scenes which drag it down, such as the one where a horse happily jumps off a cliff.

Review: This us another one of those confusing Oriental movies that are hard to follow but the main concept is quite simple, everyone wants to murder Cao Cao (Chow Yun-Fat). There's also a love story running throughout the movie which is pretty straight forward but the rest of the storyline, went straight over my head. When the true reason, why Cao Cao is so evil, is revealed, I honestly didn't understand what the movie was truly about but it scores top marks for authenticity and cinematography, like many of the other Oriental movies I have watched lately. The costumes are truly amazing, especially Cao Cao's detailed armour and I'm happy to say that the DVD carries a dubbed version, so you don't have to worry about annoying subtitles. The action scenes were also impressive because they seemed real for that day and age but I really don't know why the director had to over complicate the storyline. Anyway, it's a watchable film, mainly for the great performance from Yun-Fat and the fear that he put in the people around him but the ending was a right mess. Watchable! 

Round-Up: This is the only movie directed by Linshan Zhao so it's hard to compare her other projects to this one but the writer, Bin Wang, also wrote House of Flying Daggers and Hero with Jet Li. I'm beginning to realise that a lot of these Oriental directors, certainly like to over complicate there movies with pointless detail which is, usually unnecessary. Maybe it's because I'm used to basic concepts from the Western market, why I'm finding it hard to get to grips with the these detailed story lines and I must admit, my mind does switch off once I have to read subtitles and try and keep up with movies. Anyway, I was expecting this to be an action movie, with a name like the Assassin's but it turned out to be an intense drama which I'm am in two minds about.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their history/drama starring Chow Yun-Fat, Yifei Liu, Xinyi Zhang and Hiroshi Tamaki. 5/10